FANCY COLORED DIAMONDS

PRETTY IN PINK AT CHRISTIE’S

Be it the diamond’s association with love, their rarity or the feminine ideal, the color pink holds a special place of importance in the gemstone’s pantheon. There are rarer varieties – albeit natural fancy pink diamonds are exceedingly uncommon – but arguably no other color captures the public imagination in quite the same way.

Christie’s, the famed auction house, has a special fondness for pink diamonds, having served as the sales platform for several of the most famous such stones to come onto the open market. This month it published an article featuring 10 of the most famous pink diamonds to have come on its block in recent years. The following are top five.

5.

9.14-CARATS FANCY VIVID PINK

When the sale was announced of a 9.14-carat fancy vivid pink VS2 pear shaped diamond at Christie’s in Geneva on November 15, it was reportedly the fifth largest ever vivid pink diamond to be sold at auction.

Mounted between tapered baguette-cut diamond shoulders on a platinum ring, has valued it to sell between $16 million and $18 million, or $1.75 million to $1.97 million per carat.

It went for a higher price, selling for $18,174,632, or $1.99 million per carat.

4.

14.23-CARAT FANCY INTENSE PINK

Dubbed the Perfect Pink, at the time of its sale in Hong Kong in November 2010, the 14.23-carat, VVS2 rectangular-cut diamond was one of only 18 pink diamonds weighing more than 10 carats to have ever appeared at auction. And none of those carried the grade fancy intense pink at the time of its sale, as did this one.

Original estimated were that the stone would sell between $14 and $19 million, but four potential buyers got into a bidding war, pushing the final asking price to $23,165,968, or 30 percent more than its upper estimate.

3.

16.08-CARAT FANCY VIVID PINK

When it sold for $28,523,925 in Geneva in November 2015, it set a setting a new auction record for any vivid pink diamond. It was mounted in a ring, with a double row of pavé-set white diamonds surrounding the main stone, and a third row of small pink diamonds underneath. The band comprised of small circular-cut white diamonds set in platinum.

The stone was purchased by a Hong Kong billionaire called Joseph Lau, who named it the “Sweet Josephine” for his seven-year-old daughter, Josephine. The following day he spent a record $48.4 million to purchase a blue diamond at Sotheby’s, which he named the Blue Moon of Josephine Diamond.

2.

14.93-CARAT FANCY VIVID PINK

Described by Christie’s as the “Picasso of the Pink Diamond World,” the Pink Promise was an an oval-shaped fancy vivid pink diamond that had originally been purchased by the American gemologist and jeweler Stephen Silver in 2013 as a 16.21-carat fancy intense pink stone. he believed that the stone could achieve a higher color rating if it were cut differently.

He was correct. The recut diamond was again certified by the GIA, this time achieving a much rarer fancy vivid pink rating, and an improved VVS1 clarity grade.”

It sold in Hong Kong for $32,480,500 in November 2017, setting a new price-per-carat world record for any pink diamond, $2,175,519.

1.

34.65-CARAT FANCY INTENSE PINK

Weighing 34.65 carats and mined about 300 years in the Golconda diamond mines in India, the Princie Diamond was named for the son of the Maharani of Baroda, Sita Devi, whose nickname was Princie.

When it was purchased for £46,000 by Van Cleef & Arpels in 1960, the Maharani and he son were special guests of honor at a party held in Paris where the stone was unveiled. The diamond was earlier said to have belonged to Nizam of Hyderabad, the world’s richest man in 1937 according to Time magazine in 1937, who lost his kingdom in 1948 when it was forcibly annexed to the new Republic of India.

In April 2013, the Princie sold for $39,323,750 at Christie’s in New York, making it the most expensive pink diamond ever sold by the auction house. In so doing its surpassed the previous house record of $24.3 million set in December 2008. with the sale of the deep blue 31.06-carat Wittelsbach Diamond.